Letting the Cables Sleep
by Iced Blood
Summary: Once he was royalty. And in his death, he became a god. Only in rebirth has he finally become human. Noa Kaiba has struggled for months to find a new place in a new family. The truth of his eventual humanity, however, will fall into place when an unlikely source of conflict, confusion, and intimacy slips unnoticed into his life. As if family didn't cause enough problems.
1. Heart

_**This is a companion piece to the story I put up yesterday. If Blueshipping is my standard OTP for this franchise, then this ship is my crack OTP. To my recollection, these characters never even MEET in canon. Not to mention, well, I'll admit it doesn't seem to work on the surface. I beg patience. I've been hammering out this relationship for years now, and this is the first time I've ever tried to write it.**_

 _ **I'm using the same 100 Prompts that I picked for "Lights," but I'm writing them in reverse order for this.**_

 _ **A note: Noa's character in this story is informed by his role in "Cult of the Dragon King." He isn't quite the same person we see in the anime. He's spent over a year, at this point in his development, feeling out who he is and what he wants.**_

 _ **As a result of that, his personality has shifted more than a little from what we might remember.**_

 _ **Again, I beg that you trust me. He's still the same person. He's just . . . grown up a touch.**_

 _ **Sort of.**_

* * *

 **.**

* * *

"You have a heartbeat."

Noa Kaiba stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom, trying to remember the last time he'd bothered to _look_ at it. There wasn't much of a point to being horizontal when you didn't need to sleep.

"Most people do," Noa said slowly. "Typically it's a social cue. Hey, this one has a heartbeat. He must be _alive_."

He felt a gentle slap against his chest. "You know what I meant. I mean . . . you aren't _technically_ alive. Are you?" The figure lying against him flinched. "I-I'm sorry. Never mind. Forget I said anything."

"What have I told you about saying offensive things to me?" Noa muttered.

"I'm _sorry_."

"No. What . . . have I _told_ you . . . about saying offensive things to me?"

There was a beat of silence.

Ryou Bakura groaned as he finally sat up. "You told me . . . before I apologize, I had better make sure I've said something that's _actually offensive_." He said this with the air of a student repeating an old lesson from a tutor. One he didn't like repeating anymore.

"Good boy." Noa slid up to sit beside his companion. "Now, I'm trying to remember if you've said something I should be offended by, but my memory must be faulty." He stuck out his tongue.

" _How_ old are you again?" Ryou asked.

Noa blinked. Looked down at himself. "Uh . . . nineteen? Ish?"

"Is that your . . . real age? Or is it just . . . how old your body is?"

"My _body's_ , like, ten months old. Aniki made it for me. It's supposed to _look_ nineteen. Because that's how old I . . . would have been." Noa looked conflicted and a little sad for a moment, then smirked and punched his chest. "Good old Kaiba-shachou didn't want people figuring out that I'm _synthetic._ So he worked in a slew of . . . superfluous systems. Like a heart. And lungs. And emotions."

Ryou raised an eyebrow.

Noa blinked. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, come _on_." Noa pulled Ryou to him and kissed his forehead. "Just 'cuz I'm a sociopath doesn't mean I don't _wuv_ you. I mean, it doesn't mean I _do_ , but . . . anyway. C'mon, Clarice. Up you get. We've got food to make up for the big family vacation."

"Do you know how to cook?" Ryou asked, grabbing his shirt from the floor and pulling it on.

"Are you kidding me?" Noa looked offended. "Of _course_ not."

He threw himself out of the room and went barreling down the hallway toward the kitchen. Ryou had just managed to force himself to stand up when he heard the first explosion. This wasn't the person Ryou had been told about. The psychotic silicone prince with a grudge against pretenders to his immortal throne.

Although . . . he _did_ seem to take pleasure in causing mischief for his adopted family, all the same. So maybe it made sense, after all. He'd simply stepped down from the throne and picked up pies of various flavors to throw at the new king's face when he wasn't looking.

Ryou sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and tried not to laugh.

"I may or may not love you, too," he murmured under his breath.


	2. Cold

_**To anyone who has given, is giving, or will give this particular story a shot, thank you. I know it's a weird pairing. I'm not using it because it's weird, or because I'm trying to prove a point. It's because, in my personal understanding of the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe, it's how things unfolded for both of these characters.**_

 _ **I don't choose an OTP based on anything other than compatibility and sustainability. I don't toss characters together for nothing.**_

 _ **I normally wouldn't feel the need to justify my choices, but I can admit that this one takes some getting used to.**_

* * *

 **.**

* * *

Ryou found Noa in a random room; but then, he realized, it _wasn't_ random. It was the room he'd been allowed to stay in, the _last_ time Ryou had spent time on the Kaiba Estate. He remembered this room: it had been filled with every luxury that money could afford.

Now, it looked like a broom closet.

Noa was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall, speaking into what looked like a tape recorder. "What would've happened if I'd survived," he was asking. "Hm? How about that? Think about that. What if I'd _lived_? Would you've still adopted them? Accepted the challenge because—fuck, _why not_? Maybe it would've given me _incentive_ to rise to the occasion. A real challenge! Right?"

Ryou flinched when a voice came out of the tiny device in Noa's hand: " _It might have at_ _ **least**_ _convinced you to take your inheritance seriously. Which is more than I can say for what you_ _ **have**_ _done_."

"Awww . . . po' baby," Noa sneered. "Listen to you. Acting like you have _any_ reason to be offended. Do you think I don't _know_ what you did? How you handled things after my _unfortunate demise_? You talk about _me_ spitting on our legacy."

" _I did what had to be done to ensure the Kaiba name lived on_."

"You threatened the safety and stunted the development of a _four-year-old_ in order to manipulate the _important one_ ," Noa snapped. "You tossed him into some throwaway elementary school, you never _once_ enforced _any_ of the rules of propriety and decency that you _expected_ of Seto and me. He was collateral damage. You didn't give a single flying _fuck_ about him. But that didn't stop you from _using_ him, did it? _Did it_?!"

". . . _Argue against my methods all you like, son. They worked_."

" _In direct spite of you_ ," Noa hissed. "Don't kid yourself, old man. You _tortured_ two children for three years because you couldn't handle the truth. It _offended_ you that yourprogeny would have the humiliating indecency to be _mortal_. I hope you know something, _Chichiue_. If I _had_ lived . . . if I'd been there to _watch_ you ruin them . . . I'd have killed you with my own hands. You're _pathetic_. _Useless_. _**Weak**_. And I hope you spend the rest of eternity understanding just how little you matter. Just how much _your_ memory has been stomped into the dirt. Nobody remembers you. Seto and Mokuba are the only _real_ Kaibas to ever come out of our _fucking_ bloodline. You're a _sick joke_."

Noa pressed a button, and threw the little device across the room.

The room was suddenly cold. Ryou shivered.

". . . I know you're out there, sunshine," Noa said.

Ryou stepped into the room. "It can't be healthy to . . . do that," he said. "The past is over for a reason. Arguing with it isn't exactly . . . productive."

"No, but it's mildly cathartic." Noa sighed as he stood up. "I wasn't the only one to survive that . . . _event horizon_. I found him, hidden away, soaking in every pinprick of information about Aniki's business that he could find."

"Your father," Ryou guessed.

"Mm." Noa stretched, groaned, and shook his head. Ryou knew that he wasn't _actually_ tired. Noa went through the trappings of normalcy simply because it amused him to do so. Also, some part of Ryou guessed, he did it to make the other people around him more comfortable.

It was easier to forget Noa Kaiba was a machine when he didn't act like one.

"I put him into _this_ ," Noa said, picking up the little device he'd been talking into; it looked like a pen. "Every so often, I like to remind him that he failed. Miserably. That his methods were pointless, and that his legacy is dead. Everything he sacrificed for, everything he made horrible decisions for, is gone. Nobody remembers the Kaiba-Corp that bought and sold lives."

Ryou found a smile, but it didn't feel particularly sincere. He shivered; there was still a chill, a malaise of discontent, that permeated through the room.

"You're more like Mister Kaiba than you like to admit," Ryou said, gently resting his fingers against Noa's left arm, where a certain tattoo was currently hidden by his sleeve. "This isn't about your father's legacy at all, is it? You're hurting him . . . because of little Mokuba. Aren't you?"

Noa smirked. "Little Mokuba," he repeated.

"Come on, now," Ryou said, holding Noa's hand as they headed back down the hall. "It's his first camping trip. Stop with the sour faces. You don't want to ruin his memory of this vacation by being all . . . disgruntled and pouty, do you?"

"You have _such_ a way with words. Guilt-trip me with Mokuba. The way to get me to do _anything_."

Ryou put on a smirk of his own; it almost felt natural. "Don't pretend it doesn't work."


	3. Warm

_**It's been longer than forever since I last looked at this story, or its companion piece, but all the same I haven't forgotten about it. In the name of resurrecting the various works that I've been neglecting for so long, I thought I'd start here.**_

 _ **There isn't much to explain about this one. I'm just trying to weave a coherent narrative out of a bunch of prompts, and this was the idea that came to me.**_

 _ **And really . . . as short as this one is, I think maybe it serves a purpose in its shortness.**_

 _ **At least, that's the hope.**_

 _ **I'm slowly getting back into it, y'all. A bit more patience, I beg. I'll figure it out.**_

* * *

 **.**

* * *

Noa liked to drive with the top down, particularly when the weather was . . . bright. Ryou wrestled with why, and had come up with three possible reasons. One, he was vain, and liked to show himself off. This was evidenced by the fact that—more than semi-regularly but not quite enough to be called often—the black sheep of the Kaiba family tended to drive without a shirt on.

Two: he liked the feeling of wind on his face. This one seemed more likely, because as much as Noa liked to pretend that he was an insufferable narcissist, Ryou had been around such people before. Noa wasn't nearly as good at hiding his subtle shifts in mood and character as he thought he was, and Ryou had picked up on more than a few signs that he was . . . softening.

A narcissist? Perhaps. Insufferable? Hardly.

Vanity just didn't seem to fit Noa Kaiba's psychology. He had no time for such nonsense. He judged, weighed, and measured himself by different criteria.

The third possibility — which Ryou happened upon during the drive out to the Kaiba family's first (but hopefully annual) camping trip — was probably the one that mattered.

Noa liked the heat.

He never turned on the air conditioner, and always seemed to relish stoplights and intersections. It always took him some time before he'd pull out of a parking lot. He sometimes just looked at the sun. These things, Ryou hadn't really ever noticed before. But being on the road with someone for three hours allowed for a lot of little things to crop up.

"Was it . . . cold?" Ryou asked eventually. "In the other . . . world."

Noa frowned. Seemed to mull this over. Rubbed at his chin. "I don't remember." He chuckled. "Guess I blocked it out of my conscious memory or . . . whatever. But sometimes, I flash back to there. I . . . _feel_ myself slip back. Into that space. That god-space. Where all was mine to control, to manipulate, to tweak. To _be_. And I . . . think it was frigid."

Ryou leaned against Noa's shoulder and stared out at the unwinding highway, saying nothing else because he couldn't think of anything to add.

Except warmth.


	4. Heaven

_**Since the chapters of this series are based on prompts, rather than ideas I've constructed myself, they're going to be short. Think of these as drabbles.**_

 _ **This series, for some reason, has some of the shortest chapters in my entire history.**_

 _ **But … somehow that doesn't detract from anything.**_

 _ **At least, I hope that's true.**_

* * *

 **.**

* * *

"Do you believe in an afterlife?"

Noa chewed on this question far longer than Ryou would have anticipated. He'd thrown it out randomly as they stopped for gas, and didn't know why. He'd thought the answer would—of course—be a resounding _no_.

What reason could Noa Kaiba have to believe in such things?

But Noa didn't answer immediately. For a while, it seemed like he wouldn't answer at all. Ryou realized as they bought sunflower seeds and beef jerky that Noa was going give the question an actual answer.

He said: "I have to."

"I'm sure there's more to your thought process than that," Ryou prompted, as they headed back onto the road. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it, Ryou. I died. The . . . _real_ me is long dead. His body, small and shriveled, is buried. Gone. Lost to forever. But here I am. From my perspective, this whole existence is my afterlife. I may not be the _authentic_ Noa Kaiba, but I remember dying. I remember it as clearly as breakfast this morning."

"You didn't eat breakfast this mo—"

"Just . . . roll with me on this one."

"Sorry. Continue."

Noa smirked. Ryou smirked back.

"Anyway. I died. I woke up. And then I died again. And then I woke up again. I've been to two different afterlifes. Afterlives? Whatever. I've seen Hell. And I've seen Heaven."

Ryou licked nervously at his lips. How did one respond to that?

Then Noa blinked. His expression slackened. He stared at the road like it led to great mysteries.

". . . Does that mean Aniki is God?"


End file.
